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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), as expected, has been rolling out its major software and service updates and upgrades Monday morning during the first session of the Worldwide Developers Conference, and all of the talk has been surrounding iOS 7, the much-anticipated upgrade and re-design of the mobile OS platform for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices.

The big OS debut of Jony Ive – who made a name for himself by developing much of the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) hardware design elements – has been rumored, speculated and reported on for months, and now developers at the conference are getting their first look at the new platform to develop their apps in time for the release, which may be this fall or early in 2014. No one really seems to know at this point.

As Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) executives have taken to the stage to go through the various features of iOS 7 and some of the other software updates – Siri is getting a decent amount of play – there was one not-well-highlighted item that really didn’t have to do with the iOS but drew some major attention from tech blogs.

It is well known that Apple and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) have had an ongoing feud since their competing iOS and Android mobile platforms have been battling for market territory the last several years.

While the two companies have offered some of their services to each other’s platforms (iTunes, Google Maps, etc.), that has been tightened up a bit in recent months, especially on the part of Apple and iOS.

With iOS 6, it was noteworthy that Google Maps was dropped as the native mapping app on the platform, replaced by Apple’s own mapping service – which bombed so bad because of its poor quality that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) had to issue a public apology. There there was YouTube being dropped and flipped over into the Apple App Store for users to download, among other things.

Well now apparently the rivalry has gone to a higher level than ever. Word is that Apple has dumped the market-dominant Google Search engine and has instead aligned with the Bing engine run by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). This was done without much fanfare; in face, it was given as a quick shout-out during a presentation about new features in Siri, with the mention that it is being integrated with Bing to conduct voice-controlled search results.